


Darling

by Steadfxst



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:16:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steadfxst/pseuds/Steadfxst
Summary: They're not sleeping together.





	Darling

“Allison, can you ask Peggy to come in here please?”

Don takes his finger off the intercom button and waits the few seconds it takes Peggy to move from her office—Freddie’s old office—to his. There’s a soft knock, and then she opens the door and peeps her head inside. She’s wearing a fitted blue-and-brown plaid dress that Don would call “darling” if he wasn’t in a mood.

“You called?” she asks.

“Shut the door, please,” Don says.

Peggy frowns, but she closes it. Don pulls his pack of smokes out of his pocket, packs them, pulls one out, and lights it. Peggy stands in front of his desk. She’s trying to be patient with him, but she’s got her own work to do, and he isn’t saying anything.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

Don blows smoke towards the ceiling as he leans back in his chair.

“I know I don’t have to tell you that I don’t like office gossip.”

Peggy pulls out one of the seats that are across from Don and sits down. 

“What happened?”

“Well, a certain someone apparently told Pete Campbell that you and I are sleeping together. I assured a very scandalized Bert Cooper that there was no way a junior partner was intimate with a junior copywriter.”

Peggy swallows and forces herself not to look away in embarrassment for her flippant comment to Pete earlier that day. She knows Don is watching her every move to see if she’d crack. He stamps out his cigarette.

“Drink?”

She nods rapidly, and Don gets up and pours them each a drink from his bar. He hands her her drink before sitting back down in his chair. She takes a gulp with a grimace before speaking.

“I had no idea Pete would take me seriously. And I certainly didn’t think he’d go to Cooper about it.”

Don sips and nods once, thinking it over.

“Pardon my candidness, but Pete Campbell is an asshole, and Bert Cooper is a prude.”

Peggy laughs once in relief.

“You’re not mad?”

Don takes another drink and shakes his head.

“At you, no.”

“And you’re not mad that people might think—”

Don gives her a look, and she stops her sentence in its tracks.

“Sorry,” she says quietly.

Don’s face softens. He puts his glass down. 

“I only mean that it would never work out between us. It would only be a matter of time before you were sitting in this chair, and I’d be your househusband.”

She tries to picture Don in an apron over a hot stove, and the image brings forward a contagious laugh that even gets Don to crack a smile.

“Okay, I think that’s enough laughter at my expense. Just be careful around rats like Campbell. He’s next on my list.”

Peggy sobers up.

“Of course, Don. It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t.”

He sounds serious, but there’s a twinkle in his eye that keeps her anxiety at bay.

She exits Don’s office and lets out a shaky sigh of relief.


End file.
